Chronicles of My Life : An American in the Heart of Japan by Donald Keene (Columbia University Press)

To long-term expat residents of Japan, the name Donald Keene is synonymous with “Japan expert”. He is an American who found a deep love for Asia and Japan in particular and is also  a Professor Emeritus of Columbia University where he taught Japanese Literature. He has written extensively about Japanese literature and culture and has translated a number of Japanese classics into English. A man who was friends with the Japanese literary luminaries such as Yukio Mishima, Kobo Abe, and Yasunari Kawabata. Unfortunately, he passed away in February of this year. It only seemed appropriate to read his autobiography as my personal tribute to him.

Chronicles of My Life is his autobiography where Keene shares how his love of Asia and Japan got began .I had assumed that he was a permanent resident of Japan long before I became one myself but found to my surprise that he only became a resident in 2011 after the Tohoku Earthquake and after his retirement from Columbia University. 

I was even more surprised when Keene admits that during his childhood, “The word kimono (however I pronounced it) was probably the only word of Japanese I knew.”  He mentions that he was familiar with kanji characters, thanks to his collection of postage stamps. But he goes on to say, “I never saw a Japanese film, never listened to a Japanese piece of music, never heard a word of Japanese spoken.” He didn’t meet his first Japanese until he was in junior high school. 

Keene excelled in his academic studies and was accepted at Columbia University when he was only sixteen. He meets his first Chinese in his humanities class and became good friends. However, Lee was studying to be an engineer, literature did not hold as much interest to Lee as it did to Keene. Keene comes up with the brilliant idea of having Lee teach him Chinese and starts practicing the art of calligraphy. During Keene’s college days, he used to frequent a book shop that specializes in remainders and found “The Tale of Genji” by Murasaki Shibibu for forty-nine cents. It’s this story that opened his path to Japanese literature. 

On December 7, 1942, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Keene’s professor of the history of Japanese thought was interned as an enemy alien. Keene realizes that he would probably have to join the military but had learned of the Navy’s Japanese language school whose main purpose was to train men to be interpreters and translators. Thus, Keene was able to continue his Japanese studies in the navy.

After being discharged from the army, Keene returns to Columbia University to continue his studies in Japanese where he worked on his Master’s Thesis and Doctoral Dissertation. He also studied for a year at Harvard University before transferring to Cambridge University where he received his second Master’s Degree. His hopes of studying in Japan was not possible because it was the time of the Occupation and the only non-military people who were allowed into the country were businessmen and missionaries.

Keene fulfills his wish of going back to Japan by receiving a fellowship from a foundation to study at Kyoto University. During his stay in Kyoto, Keene writes his first articles and reviews in Japanese for academic and literary magazine.

This is a fascinating story of one man’s love affair with Japan written in a style that is entertaining and easy to understand. Keene’s quest to gain a better understanding of Japan’s literary history is so enchanting you may feel the urge to visit your local bookstore or library and starting reading Japanese literature on your own. ~Ernie Hoyt